Portrait of a driver: Michèle Mouton

The French rally star tells Franca Davenport what keeps her competing

By Franca Davenport

12:01AM GMT 17 Jan 2004

Michèle Mouton is famous for keeping up with the men. Or, more precisely, for beating them. In 1981 she was the first woman to win a World Rally Championship (WRC) event, at San Remo, and in 1982 she narrowly missed becoming world champion after winning three events. But her motivation, she says, has nothing to do with gender. Her biggest competitor is herself.

I met Michèle in Mombasa at the beginning of the East African Historic Safari Rally, in which she drove a Ford Escort with Ana Goni. As we sat in the sultry heat she ordered no fewer than four bottles of water, in order to top up her electrolytes for the first day of the rally.

Michèle loved the Safari Rally in its heyday and says that this event is one of the few historic rallies she would consider doing. And the Safari loves her. In 1983, when she came third in an Audi Quattro after driving 13 miles to Nairobi on three wheels, the Africans took her to their hearts. They call her "Micele Moto", which is a Swahili word play meaning "Hot Rice".

Michèle learnt to drive when she was 14. She can't remember the car exactly, but thinks it was her father's Citroën 2CV. "I always loved cars," she says. "Driving for me is independence... freedom. You are free when you have a car. And for me that was very important. You have to understand I never wanted to be a rally driver. Never, never."

So how did she become aware of rallying? "Just opportunity," she says. "I had a friend who was rallying and he asked if I wanted to go to Corsica with him in the practice car. He didn't like his co-driver so he then asked if I wanted to navigate with him on the Monte Carlo. I said yes and that's how I started in 1973."

However, it was Michèle's father who gave her the chance to move from co-driving to driving. "After three or four rallies he said, `If you want to continue I would prefer to see you driving. I will buy you a car and pay for it to be prepared. I will give you one year to show me what you can do.'"

Michèle took up the challenge. She drove an Alpine-Renault A110 in the 1973 Paris-St Raphaël ladies' rally, then in the Tour de France, and by 1974 she was French ladies' champion. In 1975 she became European ladies' champion and began to get sponsorship; she won the Tour de France in 1978 in a Fiat Abarth 131, then turned professional. But she still maintains it was her father's support that was the secret of her success.

"He loved driving. He loved fast cars. And I think he would have loved to do what I did. He was a prisoner of war for five years and when he came back he never had the opportunity to compete. But he came to all the rallies I did. And my mother came, too."

Michèle was clearly very close to her father and she recalls that her worst experience during her rallying career was when she heard about his death just before the start of the Ivory Coast Rally in 1982. That was the year she was leading the World Rally Championship, but on the last leg of the event she rolled the Quattro and had to retire, giving the title to Walter Röhrl.

"People thought I was upset because I lost the title. But I didn't care about the title. It was my father I was upset about."

Since she stopped professional rallying in 1987 Michèle has always driven an Audi. "It is a good car and I like it," she says. "I still like it so I don't see the point in changing." However, the Audi she drives now is an Allroad, which gives her plenty of space to accommodate the family dog.

When asked about her motivation, Michèle is very clear that she never had any inclination to prove herself as a woman in a man's world. "For me, we are men and women. We are different. I don't want to be a man and I don't want them to be women either. I have never had a problem with this. I have enough personality to know that in rallying, this" — she points to her watch — "is the most important thing. The time."

However this doesn't mean Michèle isn't competitive with men. She considers herself lucky to have driven with team-mates who have always pushed her to her limits. When she started driving professionally in the Fiat Abarth her team-mate was Jean-Claude Andruet, who at the time was the greatest driver in France; later, in the Audi team, her fellow driver was the great Hannu Mikkola.

"I think the most important motivation for me was my honour... my pride. I didn't want to look ridiculous. I didn't want to be far from them when we were driving the same car. Again it was my pride. I had the chance to rally and I had to prove that I deserved to be doing that."

Three years ago Michèle did the London-Sydney Historic Rally in a Porsche 911 with Francis Tuthill, but until now that was the only historic event she had done, other than appearing at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

So why do the East African Historic Safari Rally? "I love the country," she says. "Here the driving is very different because the sections are so much longer and it is freer. And I am very attached to freedom... If Ana asked me to do the Monte Carlo Rally I would have said no because I am not interested in repeating things. But here it's more of an experience, more like a long trip through Kenya. I did the London-Sydney because I didn't know all those countries. And here I know I love it."

Michèle knows that the historic event isn't like the Safari Rally she knew in the 1980s. There are no pace notes and her car is almost unknown to her, although she does agree that previous experience of the Safari is an advantage.

"The competition here for me is the road. It's not the other competitors. If I wanted a result I would have started with a mechanic next to me because this will be our main problem. You know most of the drivers have somebody co-driving who can fix the car, but neither Ana nor I have this knowledge, which means I have to protect the car. The others think they are in competition with me but I'm not in competition with them."

She laughs, but as the water arrived for her electrolytes I couldn't help feeling that "Micele Moto" wouldn't be able to resist a competitive challenge...